The others- Day 16 (Matera to Alberobello)

It IS not very often that we start a Bike Ride with a 76km day with hills especially after just spending a fortnight lazily eating our way through Egypt and Tuscany. However, that was our challenge today and we somehow managed it and are still standing albeit a bit tenderly! Had to be up slightly earlier this morning for packing and having breakfast before checking out of the very good Can Martini hotel and getting to the pick-up point for by a bikes at a local garage. Turned out there are 7 of us on the ride - an Irish girl and two English couples together and us. Had a briefing, collected our bikes and managed to get started by about 9. Managed to navigate out of Matera no worries and were soon in the countryside. Very different to either Tuscany or Northern Italy where we ride 2 years ago. Countryside is very like riding from Toowoomba to Warwick - rolling hills and fertile farmland with all sorts of grains plus grapes and fruit trees in production. Had a surprise just before lunch when 9 Italian air force jets in close formation came over us, release smoke trails and did aerobatics -WHAT a lovely welcome for us" we thought but soon remembered that they would be celebrating 20 September their national day based on the date Rome was taken over, thus completing the unification of Italy in 1870 (advantage of studying Italian at school!) Grabbed a bit of lunch at a place called Gila del Colle but could only squeeze in a coffee and ice-cream as they all close at 1 for siesta! A kind Italian cyclist guided us out of Collie but that played havoc with my cycle distance readings but we managed to get to Putigano ok but unfortunately there were roadworks wnich gotslly wrecked our guide documents. In the end we went into Putigano, had a quick look and then just followed the road cig s to Alberobello which took us on a better but busier road than we we supposed to be on. So good that at one stage two cycles passed is doing an estimated circa 200kph! Scary!Got into Alberobello at about 5 which was good going and we had done 76 km which compared pretty well with the ofvicual75. Dinner to night was lovely. Went down to the centre of town to a street cafe and had a lovely past in tomato sauce with z beautiful orange dessert. We can take plenty of this Italian cuisine! Not such a big cycling day tomorrow. Happy about that! Only 45km.